( – promoted by undercovercalico)
For starters, I only use “MSM” in the title because “corporate media” or “infotainment media” wouldn’t fit. That being said, the sad irony of the press corps which once again shows how out of touch the village idiots are with reality is that, despite all of the huffing and puffing about how Scott McClellan wouldn’t let them do their jobs, they still are falling flat on their faces at every turn.
I’d use the term jumped the shark (hyperlinked for those who don’t know what it means) to describe them and their role in the whole “reporting the news and professional journalism” thing that they clearly have long given up but I think the term “jump the shark” has kind of jumped the shark…
When news reporters say that their corporate bosses pushed them to take out their “America, Fuck YEAH!!!” pom poms, that is bad enough. But when the same reporter complains about how unfair McClellan was being to criticize them was not only the same one to share a stage with traitor Rove in one of the most eye-burning dances ever and is STILL, to this day the NBC News Chief White House Correspondent, and is not doing the job that McClellan accused him of not doing, well, sorry, I have no sympathies there.
And when someone like Tom Brokaw is shocked, SHOCKED, that his profession were either dumb or complicit or unfit to do the jobs they are supposed to do, it is time to not only call him on this, but to push back forcefully.
When Brokaw says that “all wars are based on propaganda”, he misses the point. Propaganda means the spreading of ideas or rumor to further your cause or to damage an opposing cause. This was not propaganda. It was lies.
Period.
Hell, even Speaker Pelosi calls it a lie, although that apparently is still not grounds for impeachment.
What makes this worse, and what all of the whiny whiners are missing is that regardless of whether McClellan is right about them not pushing back hard enough or even, as my friend thereisnospoon says, what they reported after he stonewalled them (although it is an excellent point), is that there are still so many abuses and lies and stories that they should be reporting on and are not.
Where to even begin here? Even equating McCain’s total cluelessness about the troop levels and the violence in mosul with Obama’s minor “gaffe” (if it can even be called a gaffe) about a personal story that happened to be accurate in every meaningful way is a great disservice to what Americans should know when judging who should be their next President. Or the way that the Wright/Hagee/Parsley stories were reported – if they should even have been covered at all in the first place.
And it doesn’t stop there, of course. There are real serious things – things that should be covered and reported to the American people that we deserve to know about. Things that are imperative – things that are both accurate but ignored and things that are inaccurate yet covered non-stop as if they were gospel.
Things like the number of troops that are committing suicide and have PTSD. Things like telecom immunity really being about protecting Bush and his illegal programs. Things like the GAO report that shows how unprepared we are to deal with the Taliban and al Qaeda in Pakistan. Things like the Pentagon propaganda campaign. Things like FISA. Things like fake “evidence” that overblows the threat that Iran is to the United States (or Israel for that matter). Things like the continued devastation in the Gulf Coast, almost three years later.
Things like Rove and Miers ignoring Congressional subpoenas for no good reason. Things like the hundreds of thousands of disenfranchised voters from voter ID anti-voter laws and other voter suppression tactics. Things like the same voting machines that were unreliable in 2002, 2004 and 2006 are still being used, despite many not being certified. Things like asking what exactly happened to the millions of dollars in cash that were “lost” in Iraq. Things like why the US was arming both sides of a civil war in Iraq, or exactly what the role of our troops is or the desired end game is in Iraq or the reason we should still be spending billions of dollars every month there.
So many more things. Even things like why Cindy McCain gets a pass when Teresa Heinz Kerry didn’t. Or why McCain still calls himself a “straight talker” when he is either lying, stupid or just losing it. And even bringing it back to McClellan’s bubble bursting smack in their faces, why they STILL aren’t saying that they were lied to.
All the handwringing and finger pointing and blame gaming in the world won’t change the fact that McClellan passed along (either willfully or not) lies and they were not challenged or questioned at the time. And nothing will change the fact that the independence and integrity of those who are in the corporate media were sacrificed to become “buddy buddy” with the very people that lied and destroyed national security secrets and pissed all over the Constitution and made them out for the damn fools that they proved to be.
Regardless of whether it was their choice or the choice of their corporate puppetmasters bosses.
But instead of this “woe is me” nonsense, how about a bit of reflection and actually using it as a learning experience. There is so much that needs to be reported, so much that needs exposing, so much that a bit of research can lead to a huge story that the American public will be interested in.
The sad thing is that instead of doing the job that McClellan said you didn’t do a few years ago, you choose to keep crying that it just isn’t fair.
16 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
is that a tax geek loudmouth like me could do a better job than these jackholes.
It really wasn’t their fault, you know?
They were just trying to do the right thing. They were just trying to
dokeep their jobs. :-/The military now listens to your calls and internet communication courtesy of the telcos. It conducts “renditions” to countries that actively use torture. It runs a separate justice system where fabricated “evidence” can go unchallenged.
Now there’s a seamless transition from the government to private Blackwater armies.
America has been occupied since Bush stole the election from Gore and the MSM presstitutes enabled it every step of the way.
Larisa’s post: McClatchy boys take Scotty, the WH, and the “Liberal Media” to the Woodshed” quotes Landay & Strobel’s opinion of the media’s excuses for not doing their job:
They go into more detail, with quotes and detailing how they and a few other journalists–those who understand the difference between journalism and stenography–actually did question the lies. Unfortunately, their audience was limited & their colleagues in the bigger markets and on TV didn’t choose to follow suit.
IMHO, without the pushing from the blogs, who have increasingly been informing more and more people, the media still wouldn’t be reporting any of the truth.
media is from the very “news readers” as the British properly call it. There was that “Network”-like moment when Soviet readers starting deviating from the script in first, one place; then everyplace. Soon, bye bye status quo.
We’ve actually had a similar occurrence following up on Scotty’s book, with at least two of the newsreaders admitting to executive pressure. (And don’t forget, War is good for ratings equals higher advertising rates.)
Now, we can either do the proper thing, and gently nudge them toward using the brains they were born with. Or, we can do something that might or might not be right, and shame them.
Perhaps we can challenge them? What best about, I don’t know, but I like the idea of making them show this Reuters photo:
alongside those videos they’ve shown of a throng of happy Iraqis pulling down Saddam’s statue. Note that the caption upper right talks about reporters being in that tiny cluster around the statue. And of course the photographers knew they were in a tiny group, and knew they were framing shots to look crowded. As did the reporters. Yet none of them said anything? Why? Were they simply too stupid to know?
Well, what if everybody sent them these, and the other two shots in the link above and demand they show these and explain why they participated in manipulating public opinion. Which, imo, is a license-losing offense against the public good.
If they were forced by executives to play along, who were those executives? And I want them to explain why it’s wrong to have military having its own agenda about how the public should be led, and media’s complicity in that.
One thing we really need to take advantage of is that everybody in America who is concerned about public life detests our Centralized Media. This applies no matter whether the person identifies themselves as right, left, or center. It’s the pretense that we are a Democracy that is the weak point of media, structurally. Let’s hammer each fault line they’ve given us.
All Russians know their system sucks. More Americans are learning the very same thing and internet alternative news sites will all testify.
The most mainstream of these?
http://www.projectcensored.org